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\ 

RACES of MEN 


UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 


HOW THE WORLD GREW UP 

The Story of Anthropology 

HOW THE WORLD SUPPORTS MAN 

The Story of Human Geography 

MAN AND HIS RECORDS 

The Story of Writing 

THE TONGUES OF MAN 

The Story of Languages 

MAN AND HIS CUSTOMS 

The Story of Folkways 

HOW THE WORLD IS RULED 

The Story of Government 

MAN AND HIS RICHES 

The Story of Economics 

HOW THE WORLD LIVES 

The Story of Sociology 

THIS MAN-MADE WORLD 

The Story of Inventions 


Thomas S. Rockwell Company 
Publishers 
CHICAGO 








Publishers’ Note 

This book presents in popular form the 
present state of science. It has been reviewed 
by a specialist in this field of knowledge. An 
excerpt from this review follows: 

“This first boo\ in ethnology is 
an excellent statement of a fascinat¬ 
ing field of \nowledge. Mr. Nash’s 
*Races of Men’ seems to me most 
admirably adapted to stimulate the 
minds of young people between the 
ages of eight and fourteen.” 


Signed: Ellsworth Faris 

Chairman, Department of Sociology 
The University of Chicago 








Men would move from place to place to avoid savage 
animals or to hunt other animals for food 








RACES of MEN 

R x 

p V. Nash / 

ft) 

Drawings by 
Don Nelson 



THOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 

CHICAGO 

I 93 I 




vjr 



Copyright, 1931, by 

THOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 

CHICAGO 


Printed in United States of America 


MM 22 '93) 

©CIA 38364 rJ 




CONTENTS 


I The First Men ii 

Do all people look alike? Why do we speak of 
different races? Are they all related? What 
were the first people like? Were they like people 
of today? Have we pictures of them? What 
people were they? 

II How Man Spread Over the Earth 17 

How did people become separated? What made 
them different? Are there men living every¬ 
where? How did the races move to the different 
places? Which is the oldest race? How can 
we tell? 

III How We Try to Tell Races Apart 24 

Is it easy to tell the races apart? Are people the 
same size? Are heads all shaped alike? Why are 
noses so different? Does the color of the eyes 
and hair show the difference between races? 

What makes the color? Why are Negroes black? 

How many colors for people are there? 

IV The Three Main Races of Men 31 

What race are most Americans? Are there dif¬ 
ferent kinds of white people? What are these 
four kinds of white people like? Are they very 
different from each other? Are all of them quite 
white? Are there different kinds of yellow people? 

How many branches of the Negro family are 
there? Who are the strangest people of the 
world? To what race do the Jews belong? 

V The Caucasians and Their Languages 42 

Are the languages of the races alike? Were the 
languages once the same? Who were the Aryans? 
Where did the English people come from? Do 
all languages of Europe come from the Aryans? 

Are there Mongolian languages in Europe? 


52 


VI A Visit to the Peoples of Asia 

What races live in Asia? What people first lived 
in India? Are the Persians alike? Who are the 
Bedouins? What race are the Turks? What kind 
of people live in Siberia? Where do the Mongols 
live? What sort of people are the Tibetans? Are 
the Japanese like the other Mongols? To what 
group do the Siamese belong? Are the languages 
of the Mongoloid peoples alike? 

VII Strange Peoples of Oceania 70 

What sort of people live on the islands in the 
Pacific? Are they civilized? Are there dwarfs 
in the islands? Are all the dwarfs alike? Are 
there any cannibals? What sort of people first 
lived in Australia? 

VIII A Journey Through Africa 79 

Which is the Dark Continent? Are there other 
people than Negroes in Africa? What color are 
the Egyptians? Who live in the Sudan? Who 
are the Zulus? Where did the Bushmen come 
from? Where do the Pigmies live? Are there 
any white people in South Africa? 

IX The First People of America 92 

Who were the first people in America? Why were 
they called Indians? Do they look like other 
Mongoloid peoples? How did they reach Amer¬ 
ica? Did other people come to America? What 
are the Eskimos like? What two great groups 
of people came to America? Where did the Cliff 
Dwellers live? What was the language of the 
Indians like? Do Indians live in other parts of 
North and South America? Who are the tallest 
people in the world? What people live in the 
land farthest south? Who were the Incas? Who 
were the Mayas? Who were the Aztecs? 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Men would move from place to place to avoid animals 

( frontispiece ) 


These men lived in caves thousands of years ago 12 

The earliest pictures of different races 16 

Pigmies have lived in Africa since the Stone Age 19 

A map of the earth would not loo\ li\e today's map 21 
They made tools of flint and other stones 23 

There are twice as many people in India as here 34 

The Mongolians are the Chinese, Japanese, and others 35 
The Gypsies are a strange, wandering people 39 

In Greece was born one of the greatest races 45 

The Lapps and Samoyeds wander about for pastures 50 
Much of the hard wor\ of India is done by elephants 57 
The Manchus once ruled all of China 63 

Many of the Polynesians do not have to wor\ 73 

Fijians are a dar\ chocolate color with frizzly hair 76 

There are many Arabs in Egypt and Northern Africa 80 
It is easy to tell the tribes of the Negroid family 83 

Krus live in rude huts of grass and leaves 84 

The Zulus fought with shields and long spears 86 

Some Pigmies are only three feet tall 89 

They were not really Indians at all 93 

The Indians lived a healthy, out-of-door life 99 

The Indians made their homes in different climates 103 

The hunter whirls the bolo in the air and throws it 106 











































































































































































































































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Chapter I 


THE FIRST MEN 

“CVERYONE knows that all the people in 
' the world do not have white skins. There 
are people with black skins, people with yellow 
skins, people with brown skins, and people 
with red skins. We may met on the street 
any day a black-skinned Negro or a yellow¬ 
skinned Chinese. Sometimes we may even see 
a brown-skinned Philippine Islander or a red¬ 
skinned America Indian. And there are people 
whose skins are different shades of all these 
colors. Even white people are not all of the 
same shade. Some, like the Norwegians, are 
usually very light; others, like the Italians, are 
mostly rather dark. 

Then, too, people are different in other ways 
besides the color of the skin. They are different 
in the shape of the head, in the form and color 


Do all people 
loo\ ali\e? 


ii 


12 


RACES OF MEN 


Why do we 
spea\ of 
different races? 


of the hair, in the color of the eyes, and in the 
form and size of the nose and mouth. And 
some are taller than others. 

We say that groups of people who do not 
look at all alike belong to different races. But 
why do they not look alike? Where did they 
come from? How were these races formed? 

A special branch of science tries to answer 
these questions for us. It is called Ethnology, 
or the science of races; that is, of the different 
kinds of people in the world. 

It is really amazing how many kinds of 
people there are, scattered all over the earth. 
They differ from each other in almost every 
way one can imagine. Not only is there every 
color of skin from white to black; there is every 
kind of hair, from the kinkiest to the straightest 
—black, brown, yellow, red, and all shades in 
between. Some people have very thick lips and 
some very thin lips; some have very small or 
flat noses and some have large, hooked noses. 
There are people with black eyes, others with 





THE FIRST MEN 


13 


blue eyes, and others with eyes of still different 
color. There are tall races and there are short 
races. In Africa there are people who go 
around with almost no clothing, while the 
Eskimos in the Far North are bundled up in 
furs all the time. Some people live on fruits 
and vegetables, others on meat, and others on 
all kinds of mixed foods. Some are warlike 
and some are peaceful; some live almost like 
animals and some live just as we do. 

But, strange as it may seem, all these people 
who differ so much today belong to the same 
human family. All the races of men now 
living on the earth have bodies built in the 
same way. Every person has two eyes, two 
ears, a nose, and a mouth; all have two arms 
and two legs, and the same number of fingers 
and toes. And all have the same kind of 
lungs, heart, stomach, liver, kidneys, and other 
organs. In fact, there is not nearly so much 
difference between different kinds of people as 
there is between different kinds of dogs. Just 


Are they all 
related? 


i 4 


RACES OF MEN 


What were the 
first people 

like? 


think how different a big Saint Bernard dog 
is from a little poodle. 

It is very hard to tell just what the earliest 
men looked like. They were probably great, 
rough, hairy fellows, with low foreheads, who 
walked with a stooping, shambling step, armed 
with big clubs of wood as weapons with which 
to fight off wild beasts and other enemies. The 
Neanderthal men, who lived during the time 
when a great sheet of ice covered a large part 
of Europe, no doubt looked much like this. 
We can get some idea of the sort of men they 
must have been from a number of skeletons 
that have been found. 

Then, too, there have been dug up many 
skeletons of the later men of the Old Stone 
Age. These men lived in caves thousands of 
years ago. They made tools and weapons out 
of chipped stones and bone. They, too, were 
mostly big, rough men, for they had to fight 
savage animals. Their only clothing probably 
was the skins of animals that they killed. 


THE FIRST MEN 


i5 


From the study of skeletons which belonged 
to men who lived in the last half of the Old 
Stone Age, perhaps 25,000 years ago, we begin 
to see the beginning of different races. These 
skeletons were found in southern France and 
in northern Italy. 

One of these very old races is called the 
Cro-Magnon. These people were very tall and 
well-built. The shape of their skulls and bones 
show that they probably looked like some of 
the white people living today. The other of 
these two early peoples was the Grimaldi race. 
Their skulls and bones make us think that they 
must have looked somewhat like the Negroes. 

The earliest pictures that we have, showing 
different races of men, were found in Egypt. 
The ancient Egyptians loved to cover the walls 
of their temples and the tombs of their mighty 
kings with beautifully colored pictures. In 
some of the royal tombs at Thebes, which was 
a splendid city of ancient Egypt, on the river 
Nile, there were found some interesting wall 


Were they li\e 
people of today? 


Have we 
pictures of 
them? 


What people 
were they? 



16 RACES OF MEN 

paintings. These contained pictures of four 
different kinds of people. 

First, there were the Egyptians themselves, 
who were painted red. As a matter of fact, the 
Egyptians were really brown-skinned, but the 
painters liked red better. Then there were 
people from Asia, who were painted with 
yellow skins, although they were really a light 
brown. Then there were Negroes, who came 
from central Africa. They were painted black 
in the pictures. And there were men from the 
northern part of Africa, west of Egypt, whom 
the Egyptians called Libyans. These are very 
interesting to us, because they are painted with 
white skins, blue eyes, and light-colored hair. 

These paintings are over 4,000 years old. 
When they were painted, Greece and Rome 
had not yet become famous. At that time most 
of Europe was still a wilderness, where the 
people lived by hunting and fishing. 



The earliest pictures 
showing different races of 
men were found in Egypt 



Chapter II 


HOW MAN SPREAD OVER THE EARTH 


~\ 4 ~ANKIND slowly separated into the 
different races centuries ago. Just how, 
when, or where, no one knows. Most of the 
men who have studied this subject believe that 
mankind began somewhere in the great con¬ 
tinent of Asia, though some think that Africa 
may have been man’s first home. 

But we do know that at a time so long ago 
that nobody is sure just when it was, men began 
to wander into different parts of the world. 
They may have been looking for better hunting 
places and better places to fish; or, at a some¬ 
what later date, for greener grazing grounds 
for their cattle. Or one tribe may have seized 
the good lands in a certain country and driven 
the other people out, so that they had to look 
for a home somewhere else. 


How did people 

become 

separated? 


RACES OF MEN 


What made 
them different? 


At any rate, thousands of years before history 
began, men had scattered all over the earth. 

Probably at the beginning the people all 
looked pretty much alike. But when a group 
went far away to another place to live, where 
the climate was different, the soil was different, 
and the kind of food that the people ate was 
different, then the appearance of the people 
began to change. Those who were best fitted 
to live in the new country married among 
themselves. So after the tribe had lived in the 
same country for thousands of years, the people 
would be different in looks from any other 
people. 

But different tribes were wandering around 
all the time. Perhaps one tribe would at last 
come into the land where another tribe lived 
and would settle there. Then the children of 
the two tribes would marry each other. Thus 
there would be a mixed race; the people would 
look partly like one tribe and partly like the 
other. That is why it is often very hard and 













20 


RACES OF MEN 


Are there 
men living 
everywhere? 


sometimes impossible for us to say just what 
race a certain group of people today belong to. 

No other kind of animal has been able to 
live in so many different kinds of places as man. 
Ages ago he had found a home in every con¬ 
tinent except Antarctica, the ice-covered land 
around the South Pole, which is so frightfully 
bleak that even the hardiest men could not 
make regular homes there. 

But since very early times men have been 
living in little houses made of blocks of ice in 
the Arctic regions, where the day and the night 
are each six months long. So, too, men have 
been living on the slopes of high mountains, 
like the Himalayas in Asia, which are the 
highest mountains in the world. Men have 
been living with their herds of reindeer on the 
frozen wastes of northern Europe and Siberia. 
Men have been living on the islands of the 
Pacific ocean, hundreds of miles from the 
mainland. Men have been living in the jungles 
of Africa under the burning sun. Men have 


HOW MAN SPREAD OVER THE EARTH 21 


lived who hunted with bows and arrows in 
North America and South America. And men 
have lived in far-away Australia. 

You can see how all these people, separated 
from each other in many cases for thousands 
of years, must have become very different in 
looks as well as in their customs and ways of 
living. But they were always perfectly human. 

A person may wonder how men were able 
to get all over the earth so long ago and so 
easily. In those days people did not have large, 
swift boats. The best that they had were little 
canoes, dug out of logs, which could not stand 
long ocean voyages. How did they get to 
Australia and other out-of-the-way places? 

The answer is that many thousands of years 
ago, when men first began to set out in search 
of new homes, a map of the earth, if there had 
been one, would not have looked at all like a 
map of the earth today. 

Asia, where man probably had his first home, 
was connected with southern Africa by a broad 


A map of the earth 
would not have looked 
HJ(e today s map 


How did the 
races move to the 
different places? 








22 


RACES OF MEN 


Which is the 
oldest race? 


belt of land where the Indian Ocean now lies. 
Europe was connected with Asia by land as 
it is now, and was also joined to Africa in places 
where the Mediterranean sea is today. Even 
the British Islands were united with Europe 
by solid land in those days. Then, too, the 
East Indian islands were part of Asia, with no 
water in between, and Australia and other large 
islands were separated from the mainland only 
by a few miles of water. Men could even get 
to America without having to cross an ocean. 
Asia and North America were joined together 
where Behring Strait now separates Alaska 
from Siberia, and North America was united 
with Europe by dry land, of which Greenland, 
Iceland, and the Orkney Islands are all that 
still remain. 

Another question that people sometimes ask 
is, which of the great races of men that we see 
in the world today is the oldest? From what 
we have just been saying, it is easy to find the 
answer to this question. It is, of course, that 


HOW MAN SPREAD OVER THE EARTH 23 


the great races of mankind are cousins of each 
other. The first men were not like any race 
in the world today. They were not black men, 
nor yellow men, nor white men. 

We think that in those very early days there How can 
was not much difference between men in we tell? 
different parts of the world, because the oldest 
skulls that we find, in Asia, in Europe, and in 
Africa, are shaped very much alike. And the 
tools and weapons that those ancient men made 
were so much alike that one would think they 
had been made all in one place. 

These people were living in the Stone Age. 

In the Old Stone Age they made rough tools 
and weapons out of flint and other stones, by 
chipping and flaking. Then, in the New 
Stone Age, they made beautifully polished 
stone tools and implements, or made carved 
ones cut out of horn and ivory. They also 
made little images of fishes, reindeer, horses, 
mammoths, and human beings, and they even 
drew pictures in colors on the walls of caves. 






Chapter III 


HOW WE TRY TO TELL RACES APART 


Is it easy 
to tell the 
races apart? 


Are people the 
same size? 


C HINESE people are not at all like Negro 
people. Anyone can tell them apart. 
But sometimes it is very hard or even impossible 
to say just what race a certain group of people 
belongs to. One reason, of course, is that long 
ago people of one race may have married those 
of another race. 

We might think that we could tell a good 
many races apart by the height to which the 
people grow. There are, it is true, a few small 
tribes that are very short, and a few that are 
very tall. But there is not a great deal of 
difference in height between most of the people 
of the world. They average about five feet, 
five inches, although in nearly every race there 
are some very short persons and some very tall 
ones—under five feet or over six feet tall. 


24 


HOW WE TRY TO TELL RACES APART 25 


The shape of the head, also, does not tell us 
very much about races. People belonging to 
the same race do not all have heads shaped 
just alike. Among white people, some have 
narrow heads, some have medium heads, and 
some have broad heads. The very same thing 
is true of American Indians. 

What does the nose tell us? Usually it is 
broad and flat among Negroes, high and narrow 
among white people, and medium among 
yellow people. But there are so many special 
kinds of noses among people of the same race 
that noses cannot tell us very much. Climate 
has a great deal to do with the shape of the 
nose. In warm, moist countries, people’s 
nostrils are apt to be wide, so as to let in plenty 
of air, while in cold, dry places, the nostrils are 
smaller, so that the air can be gradually warmed 
and moistened before it is taken into the nose. 

The color of the hair and the color of the 
eyes, you might think, would have a good deal 
to do with telling races apart. But here again 


Are heads 
all shaped 
alike? 


Why are the 
noses so 
different? 


26 


RACES OF MEN 


Does the color of 
the eyes and 
hair show 
the difference 
between races? 


we do not get much help. Except among white 
people, all the races of the world have dark 
hair and dark eyes. In fact, millions of white 
people have dark hair and dark eyes. Light 
hair and light eyes are found only in a rather 
small part of the white race. Fair hair and 
blue eyes are mostly found among the people 
of northern Europe and their descendants in 
the United States and other countries. Red 
hair is not very common, even among white 
people. It is found most often among the 
Scottish Highlanders, the Welsh, and the Finns. 

The shape of the hair—that is, the way it 
is formed—is of some help to us in dividing 
people into races. Negroes have very kinky or 
woolly hair, yellow people have straight hair, 
and white people have more or less wavy or 
curly hair. Woolly hair, if you look at it under 
a microscope, is flat, straight hair is round, and 
wavy hair is oval in shape. 

The color of a person’s eyes and hair, and 
also of his skin, depends upon the amount of 


HOW WE TRY TO TELL RACES APART 27 


coloring matter, called pigment, in his body. 
The same kind of pigment is found in all 
races. But some have more and some have 
less. The Negro is very dark, because he has 
a large amount of pigment in his body. Even 
white people have some pigment in their bodies. 
The only people who have no pigment at all 
are called albinos . Albino simply means white. 
They are found, once in a while, in all races. 
Nature, for some reason that we do not know, 
did not give them any pigment at all. So they 
have white hair, very white skin, and pink or 
reddish eyes, the color of the eyes being caused 
by the blood showing through them. There 
are even albino animals. We have all seen 
albino rats and mice, with perfectly white fur 
and pink eyes. They are kept as pets. 

In Africa, people need to have a large amount 
of pigment in their skins, because it protects 
them from the rays of the sun. The rays are 
so hot in some places there that they will kill 
a white man if he does not wear a special hat. 


What ma\es 
the color? 


Why are 
Negroes blac\? 


28 


RACES OF MEN 


It used to be quite common to speak of five 
main races, depending upon the color of the 
How many skin. These were the white race, the black race, 

C peopie ^are there? t ^ ie yellow race, the red race, and the brown 
race. As we have already seen, there are people 
with skins of all these different colors. But 
when we travel over the world we find that we 
cannot tell where one color stops and another 
begins. They just shade off, one into another. 

In parts of Africa near the Equator the people 
are so dark that they are really black. But as 
we go northward, we find that the people 
become lighter, from dark brown to light 
brown. When we reach the northern coast of 
Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea, we find 
people who look much like Europeans. They 
are not at all like Negroes, for Negroes, besides 
being very dark, have thick, fleshy lips, and 
kinky, black hair. When we cross over to 
Europe and go from south to north, we find 
that the color of people’s skin and of their hair 
and eyes gets lighter the farther north we go. 


HOW WE TRY TO TELL RACES APART 


29 


When we get as far north as Norway and 
Sweden, we meet many people with very white 
skins, yellow hair, and blue eyes. 

But if we go eastward from Europe into 
Asia, what do we find happening? When we 
travel through Russia, cross the Ural mountains, 
and get into the great continent of Asia, we 
find that most of the people have straight, black 
hair, yellowish skins, and big cheek bones. 
When we reach China, we notice something 
else. The people’s eyes slant in a very strange 
way. This is caused by a certain folding of 
the skin around the corners of the eyes. 

When we go on southward to the East 
Indies and the islands of Oceania, we find that 
the people we meet there are mostly brown¬ 
skinned, and generally do not have slanting 
eyes. In some of the islands where it is very 
hot we meet people who are very dark-skinned; 
in fact, we might take them for Negroes. 

Then, crossing over to America, we can still 
meet many Indians. If we look at them closely, 


Are all dar\- 
s\inned people 
Negroes? 


30 


RACES OF MEN 


What are the 
three main 
races of men? 


we will find that they have straight, black hair 
and large cheek-bones, like the yellow people, 
but their eyes are straight, and their skins are 
of a red or bronze color. 

Just as in a family of children no two are 
exactly alike (unless perhaps they are twins), 
so in the big family of mankind there are all 
sorts of differences among the many groups 
that make up the great world family. So we 
are sometimes puzzled in trying to fit every 
group into some one larger group called a race. 

Still, we shall do pretty well if we divide the 
human family into three large groups and call 
them the main races of mankind. Each of 
these we shall have to divide again into smaller 
groups or races. Even then, we shall have to 
leave out a few of the world’s people, because 
they do not seem to belong to any one of the 
three main races. Probably they are a mixture. 

The three main races are the Caucasian or 
White race, the Mongoloid or Yellow race, and 
the Negroid or Black race. 



Chapter IV 


THE THREE MAIN RACES OF MEN 


AMERICANS, for the most part, belong 
to the Caucasian race. We get the word 
Caucasian from the country around the Cau¬ 
casus mountains, which lie between the Caspian 
Sea and the Black Sea. The people living in 
that land are a fine-looking group of the white 
race, although not as light-skinned as some of 
the other white people. 

We can divide the Caucasian race into four 
smaller races: namely, the Nordic, the Alpine, 
the Mediterranean, and the Hindu. 

Nordic means Northern . Among the Nordics 
we shall find most of the peoples of north¬ 
western Europe and of the British Isles. Many 
Nordics now live in the United States, Canada, 
Australia, and other parts of the world. 

The Nordics usually have wavy, fair hair, 


What race are 
most Americans? 


Are there 
different hinds 
of white people? 


Si 


32 


RACES OF MEN 


What are these 
four hinds of 
white people li\e? 


long heads, narrow noses, very white skins, and 
blue or gray eyes. By long heads we simply 
mean that the head measures much more from 
front to back than from side to side. Nordics 
are generally tall people. 

The Alpine race gets its name from the 
Alps Mountains in Switzerland, where many 
of these people live. Most of them we shall 
find in central and eastern Europe, especially 
in Russia. There are some even in the British 
Isles and scattered through other parts of 
Europe, such as France and Italy: There are 
now many Alpines in the New World. 

These Alpine folk are rather tall, but not 
so tall usually as the Nordics, their skin is 
generally a little darker, and their noses 
broader. Their eyes are mostly brown or 
hazel, and their hair chestnut-brown or black. 
If we looked at their heads closely, we should 
find that they are broad instead of long. Some 
Alpine people have such wide heads that it 
is said they can wear a straw hat sideways! 


THE THREE MAIN RACES OF MEN 


33 


Then there are the Mediterraneans. As we 
should suppose, they live mainly around the 
shores of the great Mediterranean Sea, in 
Europe, Asia, and Africa. But some of them 
live as far north as Wales, Ireland, and other 
places. And there are many in America. 

Their heads are long, like those of the 
Nordic people, instead of broad, like those of 
the Alpines. They have black hair, which is 
wavy and sometimes curly, and their eyes are 
very dark or black. As a rule, they have 
straight, small noses. They have rather delicate 
bodies; they are only medium in height and 
sometimes very short. They are darker-skinned 
than the Alpines. 

Of course, we must remember here again 
that each of these races is not so clearly cut 
off from the others that you can always be 
sure whether a person is Nordic, Alpine, or 
Mediterranean. A person may have certain 
things about him that make him belong partly 
to one of these races and partly to another. 


Are they 
very different 
from each other? 


34 


RACES OF MEN 


Are all of them 
quite white? 



Then away off in Asia there are the Hindus. 
We do not see very much of them, because 
there are scarcely any Hindus in the United 
States. But they are a very large branch of 
the human family. In India, their homeland, 
there are about three hundred million people, 
most of whom belong to the Hindu race. That 
it more than twice as many people as there 
are in the whole United States. 

The Hindus are very dark, much darker 
usually than any of the other Caucasian people. 
They look more like the Mediterraneans than 
like the Alpines or the Nordics. The Hindu 
has a dark brown skin, black, wavy hair, dark 
eyes, and a well-shaped nose, though there is a 
good deal of difference among the Hindus in 
the exact shape of the nose. The Hindu is 
generally rather tall. 

A few small groups of the Caucasian race 
we cannot very well fit into any one of these 
four great human families. 

We come next to the Mongoloid or Yellow 

j t 

C Aj! ^ ere are twice as many 

people in India as in 
the United States 


THE THREE MAIN RACES OF MEN 


35 


race. The word Mongoloid means simply 
Mongol-like. The Mongols, who have given 
their name to this great race, are a people o£ 
central Asia, north of China. 

The Mongoloid race is divided into three 
main groups. The first is the Mongolian. 
This takes in the Mongols themselves, the 
Chinese, the Japanese, and some other peoples. 
They have straight, black hair, their heads are 
broad, their noses are about medium, their 
eyes generally dark brown, and their skin 
light brown or yellowish, but sometimes rather 
fair. They are generally below the average in 
tallness, though some are taller. Their eyes 
have that strange, slanting appearance that we 
have already noticed. 

The second group of Mongoloids is the 
Malaysians. In this group are the people of 
the Malay peninsula, in southeastern Asia, the 
people of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, the Philip¬ 
pines, and some other people in that part of 
the world. They have brown skins, dark eyes, 


The Mongolians are 
the Chinese, Japanese, 
and some other peoples 


Are there 
different \inds 
of yellow people? 







3 $ 


RACES OF MEN 


To what race do 
the American 
Indians belong? 


straight, black hair, with a broad face and 
small nose. But they do not usually have the 
slanting eyes that we saw in the first group of 
Mongoloids. 

The third branch of the Mongoloid family 
is made up of the American Indians. We 
used to think that the American Indians were 
a race all by themselves. But we believe now 
that, like the Malaysians, they are a part of 
the great Mongoloid race. They have bronze 
or reddish skins and are often very tall. Their 
faces are broad and their noses often quite 
large. They have big cheek-bones. Their eyes 
are dark and their hair straight and black. 
Some of them have long heads and others 
broad heads, just as do the Caucasians. 

The Eskimos, that strange people who live 
amid the ice and snow around the North Pole, 
belong to this branch of the Mongoloid family. 

The Indians are divided into so many dif¬ 
ferent tribes that we could not begin to name 
all of them here. 


THE THREE MAIN RACES OF MEN 


37 


Finally, there is the Negroid or Black race. 
Negroid means Negro-like, and Negro means 
black. 

First in this group we have the Negroes 
themselves, of whom there are millions in 
Africa. There are also many of them now 
in the United States, in the West Indies, and 
in South America. Their forefathers were 
brought as slaves to the New World, hun¬ 
dreds of years ago, to work on the plantations. 

The Negroes have kinky or woolly hair. 
Their heads are long, their noses broad or flat, 
and their skin is very dark, so dark that it is 
often quite black. Their eyes, of course, are 
very dark or black. Usually Negroes are tall. 

Another branch of the Negroid family is 
the Melanesians, sometimes called Oceanic 
Negroids. They are little groups of people 
who live in certain islands of the broad Pacific 
Ocean, such as Papua, the Fiji, and the Solo¬ 
mon Islands. We put them with the Negroids, 
because they are very dark and have frizzly 


How many 
branches of the 
Negro family 
are there? 


3« 


RACES OF MEN 


Who are the 
strangest people 
of the world? 


hair, black eyes, and thick lips. But their hair 
is not woolly, like the Negroes, and these peo¬ 
ple are not so tall as most Negroes. 

Then in the third branch of the Negroid 
family we find one of the strangest peoples in 
the world. They are the Negritos (Little 
Negroes) or Dwarf Blacks. They are pigmies, 
the smallest people in the world. Little 
groups of them are scattered over quite a large 
part of the world near the equator. There 
are some in central Africa, and others in the 
Malay peninsula, in Papua, in the Andaman 
islands, and in the Philippines. 

Two large tribes in South Africa, the Bush¬ 
men and the Hottentots, we also place with 
the Negritos, though they are somewhat taller. 

If we divide the big human family into 
these three main races, we shall find that they 
will take in about 99 per cent of all the people 
in the world. A few tribes or peoples, in out- 
of-the-way parts of the earth, such as the 
natives of Australia, will still be outside, be- 


THE THREE MAIN RACES OF MEN 


39 


cause we cannot be sure just where they belong. 

Where shall we put the Jews? They live 
in many different countries all over the world. 
They belong to the Caucasian race, and most 
of them are Alpines, though there are many 
Mediterraneans and even some Nordics among 
them. As a rule, they look a good deal like 
the other people in the countries where they 
have lived for a long time. All the Jews once 
lived in a part of western Asia (Asia Minor) 
called Palestine. But most of them were 
driven out of their homes by wars hundreds 
of years ago and had to find homes in other 
countries. There are now about ten millions 
of Jews in the world. 

The Gypsies are a strange, wandering peo¬ 
ple, with very dark skins. We think that 
they came first from India, and so belong to 
the Hindu race. Little bands of them are 
now found in nearly every part of Europe and 
even in the United States. They are a very 
restless people; they live in camps of their 


The Gypsies are a 
strange, wandering 
people 


To what race 
do the Jews 
belong? 



40 


RACES OF MEN 


Where do the 
white people 
live? 


own, and they never stay long in one place. 
They are fond of bright colors and ornaments, 
and they make their living mostly by horse 
trading and fortune telling. 

If we take a map of Europe, we can show, 
by means of three stripes running in a zigzag 
way across the map, where the Nordics, the 
Alpines, and the Mediterraneans mostly live. 
The Nordics, of course, will be in the North, 
the Mediterraneans in the South, and the 
Alpines in between. 

These belts cut right through some coun¬ 
tries, such as Germany, France, and Italy. 
Germany is partly Nordic and partly Alpine, 
Italy is partly Alpine and partly Mediter¬ 
ranean, and France is partly each of the three. 
The British Isles are mainly Nordic, but there 
are many Alpine and Mediterreanean people 
there. The Dutch and the Scandinavians 
(Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, and Icelanders) 
are almost wholly Nordic. 

Where did these three kinds of white people 


THE THREE MAIN RACES OF MEN 


4i 


in Europe come from? That is a hard question 
to answer, because they have all been there 
for ages. The Mediterraneans seem to have 
arrived first. Their forefathers, probably, 
were living in Europe at the time that the 
great Ice Sheet came down from the North 
and covered a great deal of the continent. 
Then, when the climate grew warmer and the 
ice melted, other peoples came in and settled 
in the lands where the ice had been. 

The broad-headed Alpines, we think, 
streamed in from central Asia, and filled up 
the middle part of Europe. Many broad¬ 
headed people still live in central Asia. 

The forefathers of the Nordics also may 
have come in from Asia. Some think that 
they might perhaps be a branch of the Medi¬ 
terranean race (both have long heads) who 
wandered north and whose children became 
tall and fair-skinned. Many persons, however, 
believe that the ancestors of the Nordics were 
the people called Aryans. 


Where did 
they come from? 


Chapter V 


Are the 
languages of 
the races ali\e? 


THE CAUCASIANS AND THEIR 
LANGUAGES 



ANGUAGES spoken by the various peo- 


^ pies ought to show us to just what race 
or branch of a race a group of people belong. 
But this is not always true. For instance, the 
Negroes in the United States now all speak 
English, which is a Caucasian language. One 
race very often learns to speak the language of 
another race and forgets its own. If we look 
at the languages now spoken by the peoples 
of Europe, we learn some surprising things. 

As we have seen, there are only three 
branches of the Caucasian race in Europe. 
But there are many languages. Some of the 
best known of these are English, French, 
German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, 
Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and 


Are the 
languages of 
the races ali\e? 


43 


THE CAUCASIANS AND THEIR LANGUAGES 43 


Greek. Now all of these languages, besides 
many others, all belong to the same family. 

This is hard to believe, because the people 
who speak those languages are very different. 
But we know that it is true, because all these 
languages are much the same in their forms. 
Stranger still, hundreds of their words are 
very much alike, such as the words for father, 
mother, brother, sister, one, two, three, s\y, 
fire, and so on. We say that these words 
grew from the same roots. But they branched 
off from one another, in the different languages, 
so long ago that the way of pronouncing them 
has changed, and you would hardly know 
them now as being really the same words. 

Then another strange fact was found out. 
The men who make a study of languages saw 
that the speech of these peoples of Europe was 
also very much like the languages spoken by 
some of the peoples of western and southern 
Asia, such as the Persians and the Hindus. 

Thousands of years ago there lived, either 


Were the 
languages 
once the same? 


44 


RACES OF MEN 


Who were 
the Aryans? 


on the plains of Asia, north of the lofty 
Himalaya Mountains, or to the west of there, 
perhaps even on the shores of the Black Sea 
in what is now southern Russia, a race of 
people who kept flocks and herds. We can 
tell a good deal about the kind of life they 
lived by studying the words that have come 
down from their speech into modern languages. 
We call these people the Aryans, a word which 
means noble. 

Long before the beginning of history the 
Aryans had begun to wander off in different 
directions. What caused these wanderings we 
do not know. Perhaps their grazing grounds 
began to get too dry because of lack of rain in 
the hot summers, so that some of the people 
had to look for greener pastures somewhere 
else for their flocks and herds. Perhaps the 
Aryans grew in numbers so fast that some of 
them had to find homes in other lands. 

However that may be, we know that ages 
ago a large band of these Aryans made its 




THE CAUCASIANS AND THEIR LANGUAGES 45 

way down into India. They were tall, strong, 
white people, brave and daring. They con¬ 
quered a large part of India. They spoke a 
language called Sanskrit. It is not spoken 
now, but it is the parent of many languages. 

Another band of Aryans made its way down 
into Persia, which used to be called Iran. They, 
too, conquered a great country, and the people 
there still speak an Aryan language. 

Another group of Aryans traveled all the 
way over to Greece, where they soon made 
themselves at home. Here, as in other coun¬ 
tries, they found people already living. They 
had to fight with these people for the right to 
live in the land. But afterwards the Aryans 
and the other people married one another. So 
their children were not real Aryans, although 
they spoke an Aryan language. 

In Greece, after the coming of the Aryans, 
there was born one of the greatest races that 
the world has ever seen. They wrote grand 
poems in their beautiful language, they built 


In Greece was born one 
of the greatest races 
of the world 


Where did 
the Aryans go? 










What became of 
some of these 
bands of Aryans? 


46 RACES OF MEN 

lovely marble temples, and they carved statues 
which the world never tires of admiring. 

Still another band of these Aryan people 
kept on going westward until they reached 
Italy. There, too, they found good homes for 
themselves, and mingled with the people 
already living there. One of their towns, called 
Rome, grew stronger and stronger until it 
ruled the largest empire the world had ever 
seen. The Romans spoke a fine language 
called Latin, because the part of Italy in which 
Rome stood was known as Latium. (We pro¬ 
nounce this last word Lay-shum.) 

Another large band of Aryans went across 
central Europe, perhaps even earlier than the 
bands that went to Greece and Italy. They 
went into a number of countries, such as 
France, Spain, and the British Isles. These 
people were the Celts. The Celtic language 
still is spoken in Wales, in the Scottish High¬ 
lands, in parts of Ireland, and in Brittany, a 
part of France, But some of the people who 


THE CAUCASIANS AND THEIR LANGUAGES 47 


speak Celtic are Nordic, some are Alpine, and 
some are Mediterranean in race. This is true 
also of people speaking other languages now 
used in Europe. 

But we have not finished yet with the 
Aryans. Next came the Teutons, who settled 
around the Baltic Sea, along the shores of the 
North Sea, and in Scandinavia. About fifteen 
hundred years ago a group of these Teutonic 
people, the Anglo-Saxons, crossed over into 
England. The Anglo-Saxons soon were ruling 
that country. Then the Normans came over 
and conquered England. The Normans also 
were a Teutonic people. They lived first in 
Scandinavia, but made their homes for a long 
time in Normandy, a part of France, where 
they had learned to speak French. The Anglo- 
Saxon and the Norman-French speech finally 
became the English language. 

The last groups of Aryans that went out in 
search of new homes were the Slavs and the 
Lithuanians. They filled up eastern Europe. 


Where did the 
English people 
come from? 


4 8 


RACES OF MEN 


Where did the 
last group 
of Aryans go? 


Their descendants live in Russia, in Poland, in 
Czechoslovakia, in the Balkan countries, in 
Lithuania, and in other near-by lands. The 
people there still speak languages that have 
come down to them from the speech of those 
old Aryans. 

Now we must see how it happens that many 
people in Europe, besides those in Italy, speak 
languages that are much like the Latin speech 
of ancient Rome. 

We were just talking about how Rome be¬ 
came a mighty empire. It ruled all the coun¬ 
tries around the Mediterranean Sea. That was 
thought to be almost the whole world in those 
days. The Romans, wherever they went, took 
the Latin language with them. It was one of 
the finest languages in the world, and the people 
who spoke it wrote many great books. That 
is why we study Latin in our schools today. 

The people of many countries in the Roman 
empire learned to speak Latin. After the em¬ 
pire was swept away, these countries became 


THE CAUCASIANS AND THEIR LANGUAGES 49 


separated from each other. There was much 
war and confusion for hundreds of years. The 
Latin speech lived, but it changed a great deal 
in each country. Today we have great lan¬ 
guages such as Italian, French, Spanish, and 
Portuguese, which have all come down from 
the old Latin. Over in eastern Europe there 
is a country called Roumania, where the people 
speak another language of the Latin family. 

In fact, there are only a few languages in 
Europe that we cannot trace back to those great 
people, the Aryans, who spread over Europe 
in those day so long, long ago. The Finns, the 
Hungarians, and the Turks speak languages 
that were brought to Europe by tribes from Asia 
who were Mongoloids. But these people to¬ 
day are not very different in race from their 
neighbors in Europe. So we put them with the 
Caucasians now. 

Then there is a quaint little people in Europe 
called the Basques . They live in the valleys 
of the western Pyrenees, the mountains between 


Do all the 
languages of 
Europe come 
from the Aryan? 


50 


RACES OF MEN 


Are there 
Mongolian 
languages in 
Europe? 



France and Spain. There are only a few thou¬ 
sand of them. They, too, are now much like 
their neighbors in appearance. But their lan¬ 
guage is different from any other. We think 
it comes from the speech of the people who 
lived in Europe during the New Stone Age. 

We must not forget two other little peoples 
tucked away in the far north of Europe, in lands 
so cold that probably nobody else wanted them. 
These are the Lapps and the Samoyeds, who 
live along the Arctic coast. They wander from 
place to place, looking for pasturage for their 
herds of reindeer. They came long ago from 
Asia and still speak the languages that they 
brought with them. In race they are cousins of 
the Mongoloid peoples of Asia. 

There are two other interesting language 
families, besides the Aryan, spoken by Cauca¬ 
sians in Asia and Africa. One of them is called 
Semitic . The Semites are dark whites, belong¬ 
ing to the Mediterranean race. In ancient times, 
peoples of this family built great empires, such 


The Lapps and Samoyeds wander 
about hunting pastures for 
their reindeer 



THE CAUCASIANS AND THEIR LANGUAGES 51 


as Babylonia and Assyria in Asia, and Carthage 
in northern Africa. The Jews, too, have come 
from this family, though now most of them 
speak the languages of the other countries where 
they have found homes. 

The Arabs are another great Semitic people. 
Many hundreds of years ago a man named 
Mohammed was born in Arabia. He taught a 
new religion to his people. Then the Arabs 
went out and conquered many countries. They 
carried their language with them wherever they 
went, and many of the people whom they con¬ 
quered learned to speak Arabic. Arabic is 
still spoken, not only in Arabia, but in a large 
part of Asia Minor and of Africa. 

The other Caucasian language family is 
called Hamitic. More people spoke it in the 
past than do now. It is somewhat like the 
Semitic family. A Hamitic language was 
spoken by the ancient Egyptians. Other Ham¬ 
itic languages are still spoken by certain peoples 
in northern Africa. 


Where do the 
Semitic people 
live? 


Chapter VI 


A VISIT TO THE PEOPLES OF ASIA 



SIA is the largest of all the continents; and, 


-*■ as we have seen, it was probably the very 
first home of the human family. 

The peoples of that great continent are Cau¬ 
casians and Mongoloids, though down in the 
southeastern tip of the continent there is a small 
tribe of Negroids, and there are a few partly 
Negroid people in southern India. 

Caucasians live in the western peninsula of 
Asia, which is called Asia Minor, and in the 
great Arabian peninsula. Other branches of 
that race live in Persia, Afghanistan, and India. 
The great chain of mountains called the 
Himalayas, the highest in the world, divides the 
Mongoloids from the Caucasians in central 
Asia. North of the Himalayas the people are 
Mongoloids, who fill all of eastern Asia. 


A VISIT TO THE PEOPLES OF ASIA 


53 


The Hindus, as we call the people of India, 
are one of the largest branches of the human 
family. As we have already seen, there are about 
three hundred million Hindus. Of course India 
must be a very large country to hold so many 
people. If you will look at India on the map, 
you will see that it is like a big triangle, with 
the tip of it dipping far down into the Indian 
Ocean, while the broad top of it snuggles up 
against the Himalayas Mountains. 

The people of India are not all alike. There 
are hundreds of different groups, with different 
ways of living. Some of them live in great 
cities and are very well educated, while others 
are tribes that live in the jungle and stand very 
low among the world’s people. 

We have already learned how, thousands of 
years ago, the Aryans came down from the 
North into India. They were a tall, brave, 
light-skinned people. They conquered a large 
part of the country. Their language was called 
Sanskrit. It is no longer a living speech, but 


Are all the 
Hindus of the 
same race? 


54 


RACES OF MEN 


What people 
first lived 
in India? 



most of the people of India today speak lan¬ 
guages which have come down to them from 
the original Sanskrit. 

These Aryans, when they came into India, 
found the country well filled with people. These 
other people were dark-skinned. The Aryans 
mingled with them. In the south of India the 
Dravidians, and in Ceylon (a large island south 
of India) the Veddas, are like the people who 
filled India when the Aryans first came. They 
are very dark, but not Negroids. Even before 
these people came to India there were other 
people living there who were Negroids. In the 
jungles of southern India and in Ceylon there 
are some tribes that are much like Negroids. 
They are extremely dark and have curly black 
hair. They go about almost naked and live a 
very wild state. 

The Dravidian peoples of southern India, 
such as the Telugus, the Tamils, and the Ma- 
layalims, are much more civilized. Their skins 
are brown, but their faces look a good deal like 





A VISIT TO THE PEOPLES OF ASIA 


55 


those of some of the dark whites belonging to 
the Mediterranean race. 

The people of the more northern parts of 
India are of lighter skin. In the Kashmir val¬ 
ley and the Punjab and Rajputana we find peo¬ 
ple who are light brown in color, with long 
heads, high foreheads, and very Caucasian faces. 
In the northwest part of India there are people 
who are so light-skinned that they might be 
mistaken for English or American. 

Most of the people of India, even though liv¬ 
ing together in the same towns and cities, are 
divided into groups called castes. The mem¬ 
bers of each caste have to keep themselves apart 
from members of other castes. 

One very interesting race in India is the one 
known as the Parsees. There are only about 
100,000 of them. They live in and around the 
city of Bombay, and their forefathers came 
a long time ago from Persia. They are an in¬ 
telligent people, most of whom are merchants. 

India has many large cities and beautiful 


Are all the 
Hindus darl(? 


Are the 
Persians ali\e? 


56 RACES OF MEN 

temples. The country is very fertile; much 
of the hard work is done by tame elephants. 

The people of Persia also belong to the Cau¬ 
casian race. They speak an Aryan language. 
But they are much lighter-skinned than most 
of the Hindus. In ancient times Persia was a 
great empire and ruled many other countries. 
There are two kinds of people in Persia. One, 
the Farsi, have fair skins, long heads, and dark, 
chestnut colored hair and beards. Sometimes 
they even have blue eyes. The other people, the 
Lori, are taller and a great deal darker. They 
also have long heads, but their hair is often 
black. Their faces are oval-shaped. All the 
people of Persia look a good deal like Euro¬ 
peans, though most of them do not dress like 
the people of Europe. 

To the west of Persia, in the country south 
of the Caucasus Mountains, live the Armenians. 
They are a brave little people. They have suf¬ 
fered terribly at the hands of some of their fierce 
neighbors. The Armenians are Caucasians and 



Much of the hard wor\ in India is done by tame 
elephants trained to many tas\s 


57 
































58 


RACES OF MEN 


Who are the 
Bedouins? 



they speak an Aryan language. They have 
brownish skins, broad heads, and large noses. 
They look very much like Jews, but they are 
Christians. Many of them are merchants. 

Down in the southwest corner of Asia is the 
great peninsula of Arabia. Most of it is a hot, 
sandy desert. The people who live there are 
tribes of Arabs, sometimes called Bedouins. 
They wander around the country with their 
horses and camels in search of pastures. They 
live in tents when they stop at a place where 
they find grass and water. The Arabian horses 
are the finest in the world. A great many Arabs 
live in other near-by countries, such as Syria, 
Palestine, and Mesopotamia or Irak, where they 
have towns and cities and do not wander about. 

The Arab is a Caucasian of the Mediter¬ 
ranean family. He has an olive colored skin, 
dark eyes and glossy black hair, generally he 
has a beard, and his head is long. His face is 
apt to be handsome. His body is slender, but 
he is not very tall. 





A VISIT TO THE PEOPLES OF ASIA 


59 


A large part of Asia Minor is the home of the 
Turks. They came from central Asia hundreds 
of years ago. They were then a tribe of Tatars 
of the Mongoloid race. But they have mingled 
with the Caucasian people in Asia Minor so 
much that they now look much like their neigh¬ 
bors. Yet the Turks still speak the language 
that they brought with them from their old 
homeland in central Asia. It is mostly their 
speech now that tells us that they once belonged 
to the Mongoloid race. As we saw, there are 
also some Turks in Europe. 

Hundreds of years ago the Turks conquered 
many other countries. They ruled a great em¬ 
pire which had in it such countries as Greece, 
Serbia, Bulgaria, and Roumania, also Egypt 
and other countries of northern Africa. At one 
time they almost captured Vienna. But the 
other peoples whom the Turks ruled have now 
won their freedom. The head of the Turkish 
Empire was a man known as the Sultan. Many 
of the Sultans were cruel, wicked men. But 


What race 
are the Tur\s? 


6 o 


RACES OF MEN 


What \ind of 
people live in 
Siberia? 


Turkey is now a republic, and the Turkish 
people are trying hard to catch up with the rest 
of the civilized world. 

There are other interesting peoples in western 
Asia, such as the Kurds and the Afghans. The 
Kurds are a very fierce race of horsemen, neigh¬ 
bors of the Armenians, and they live in tribes. 
Like the Arabs and Turks, they are Moham¬ 
medans. They belong to the Caucasian family. 

The Afghans live in a little country northwest 
of India. It is called Afghanistan. They, too, 
are a very warlike people, living in tribes. The 
men are tall, well-built fellows, with dark skins 
and big beards and whiskers. They are Cau¬ 
casians in race and Mohammedans in religion. 

Now we shall make our way to the homes of 
the Mongoloid peoples of Asia. 

Siberia is the home of many tribes which the 
outside world seldom hears anything about. 
Most of them wander around, trying to get a 
living in that bleak country. 

But as we go eastward and southward, we 


A VISIT TO THE PEOPLES OF ASIA 61 

come to a number of great Mongoloid peoples, 
such as the Mongols, the Tibetans, the Man- 
chus, the Koreans, the Chinese, the Japanese, 
the Siamese, and the Burmese. 

The Mongols live in Mongolia, a country 
very high above the level of the sea. It is a 
land of grass-covered plains. The Mongols 
keep large herds of horses, also camels, oxen, 
and sheep. They move about from place to 
place, pitching their tents of thick felt in the 
places where they want to stay for a while. 
There are fierce storms in their country, and 
the winters are terribly cold. But the Mongols 
are a strong, healthy people. They can stand 
hardships that would kill other people. The 
men spend most of their time on horseback. 
They often have horse races in which prizes 
are given to the winners. 

Hundreds of years ago the Mongols had a 
great empire. They ruled China, India, and 
other countries. They even swept into Europe 
and conquered Russia. Some people think that 


Where do the 
Mongols live? 


62 


RACES OF MEN 


What are the 
Mongols li\e? 


in those days these Mongols brought to Europe 
from China such things as gunpowder and the 
art of printing. 

The Mongols have yellowish-brown skins, 
are medium tall, with broad heads, big cheek¬ 
bones, straight black hair, broad nostrils, and 
rather dark brown eyes, usually slanting, but 
sometimes straight. 

Going south from Mongolia we come to 
China. This is a very large country and much 
warmer than Mongolia. The people who live 
there are the Chinese. They are the largest 
branch of the human family. There are about 
four hundred million of them. Most of them 
have yellowish skins, with straight black hair 
and slanting brown eyes. Their bodies are not 
so hardy as those of the Mongols. They are 
medium in height, although some are very tall. 
Of course, in so large a country there is a good 
deal of difference among the people. 

The Chinese have lived in their country for 
thousands of years. They are mostly very hon- 


A VISIT TO THE PEOPLES OF ASIA 63 


cst, hard-working people. They earn their 
living by working on little farms, trading, and 
making many beautiful things, such as silk and 
porcelain. The Chinese also were the first 
people who made tea. They invented gun¬ 
powder and printing long before the people of 
Europe knew about such things. 

To the northeast of China is Manchuria. The 
Manchus belong to a branch of the Mongoloid 
family that makes its home in the country reach¬ 
ing from Manchuria up to the Arctic ocean. 
These people are the Tungus. In the land 
along the Amur River they are farmers and 
stock breeders. Farther north they fish and 
keep reindeer. They have yellow skins, big 
cheek-bones, straight black hair, and slanting 
eyes, and they are rather short and stocky. The 
Manchus once ruled all of China. 

The Tibetans are one of the strangest of the 
world’s peoples. They live in Tibet, a very high 
land north of the Himalayas Mountains. Few 
white people have ever visited their country. 


The Manchus once 
ruled all of China 


Where did 
the Manchus 
come from? 



6 4 


RACES OF MEN 


What sort of 
people are 
the Tibetans? 


The people in the southern part of the country 
till the land and live in towns. But those in the 
northern part, which is poorer land, live a wan¬ 
dering life with their flocks and herds. 

The Tibetans are a mixed people. The 
Drupa tribe will be the best for us to look at. 
These people are short in body and round- 
headed. They have long black hair, brown or 
hazel eyes, rather large cheek-bones, and thick 
noses. They have broad shoulders, large feet 
and hands, and light brownish skins. 

The Koreans are another strange people who 
for many hundreds of years lived all by them¬ 
selves and were seldom seen by outsiders. Korea 
used to be called The Hermit Kingdom . It is 
a peninsula, shaped somewhat like a thumb, 
hanging down from Manchuria into the Pacific 
Ocean and nearly touching Japan. The coun¬ 
try is now ruled by Japan. 

The Koreans are very tall people with quite 
light skins. In fact, some of them are almost 
white. Their faces are a great deal like those 


A VISIT TO THE PEOPLES OF ASIA 65 


of Caucasian people. Some Koreans even have 
brownish hair and some have beards, showing 
that they are a mixed people. Still, we put them 
among the Mongoloids. 

Now we come to the Japanese. Their coun¬ 
try, too, was for hundreds of years cut off from 
the rest of the world. But now Japan is one of 
the leading nations of the world. Look at the 
map and you will see that Japan is a chain 
of islands stretching from southwest to north¬ 
east, off the coast of Asia. The ocean around 
these islands is several miles deep, and there are 
often terrible earthquakes in the islands. 

We count the Japanese among the Mongo¬ 
loids, though they, too, are mostly much lighter 
than other peoples of that race. Their skins 
are not so yellow as are those of the Chinese, 
and their eyes are less slanting. Some of them 
look very much like Caucasians. 

The Japanese are a bright, wise, and active 
people. They are brave; have a high sense 
of honor, and a deep love of their country. 


Are the Japanese 
li\e the other 
Mongols? 





66 


RACES OF MEN 


Who are the 
hairiest people 
in the world? 


We must not forget to take a peep at the 
Ainu. (The name is pronounced just like <V L 
knew.”) The Ainu are an odd little people 
who live in some of the northern islands of 
Japan. Most Mongoloids have very little hair 
on their faces and bodies. But the Ainu are 
about the hairiest people in the world. Their 
heads are covered with thick, wavy, black hair, 
and they have big, bushy mustaches and beards. 
We think that their forefathers were the first 
people who lived in Japan. But there are only 
a few thousand of them left now. They have 
light skins, and their eyes are brown or hazel. 
Their faces are broad, their noses broad but 
small, and their eyes are straight, not slant¬ 
ing. They are stocky, thick-set fellows, shy 
among strangers, but peaceable. They live in 
villages of wood huts. They are good fishermen. 

The Ainu are one of the peoples of the world 
that do not seem to fit into any of the great races. 
We believe that they are nearer to the Cauca¬ 
sians than to any other race. 


A VISIT TO THE PEOPLES OF ASIA 67 


Down in the southeast part of Asia are some 
other peoples of the Mongoloid family, such 
as the Siamese and the Burmese. Siam and 
Burma are ancient countries, with many curi¬ 
ously carved temples. The climate is very warm 
in this part of the world. 

The Siamese are a greatly mixed people. 
They are related to the Chinese on the north 
and to the brown-skinned Malays on the south. 
They are tall, with olive-colored skins, flat noses, 
large cheek-bones, and black hair. There are 
about ten million people in Siam. 

Burma is a country lying west of Siam and 
east of India. The Burmese are another mixed 
people. Their faces are round and soft, and 
their skins are a yellowish-brown or olive color, 
though sometimes darker. They have black 
hair and small, straight noses. They are rather 
short in height. 

The Burmese people are bright, cheerful, and 
very friendly to strangers. They live a free and 
easy life, and they do not work very hard. 


To what group 
do the Siamese 
belong? 


68 


RACES OF MEN 


Burma was once a great kingdom, but now it 
is ruled by England. 

Are the languages The Mongoloid peoples of Asia speak many 
°leopies°ali\!? ld l an g ua g es > some of which are very different 
from others. The Chinese language is one that 
seems very queer to us. It has words of only one 
syllable. Many of the words have the same 
sound, and to show just what a word means you 
have to say it in different tones of voice, just as if 
you were singing. And there is no grammar to 
learn. That makes it easy, one would think, 
for Chinese school children. But then, to learn 
to write in Chinese they have to remember 
thousands of picture signs instead of an alpha¬ 
bet of only twenty-six letters. For the Chinese 
have no alphabet. There is a different sign for 
every word, and some of them are very hard 
to write, and even harder to remember. 

Now look again at the map and you will see 
a peninsula like a long finger reaching down 
from the southeast corner of Asia toward the 
- -JT East Indian Islands. Most of the people who 





A VISIT TO THE PEOPLES OF ASIA 69 


live there belong to the Malaysian branch of 
the Mongoloid race. We call them the Malays. 
They are a very widespread people. We find 
other groups of them in the islands of the East 
Indies. These are the Oceanic Mongoloids. 

There are two kinds of Malays in the Malay 
peninsula. There are the civilized Malays who 
live in towns, and the wild Malays who roam 
in the forests. These wild Malays have darker 
skins than the others. It is a copper-colored 
brown. They have straight, bluish-black hair, 
large cheek-bones, rather flat faces, and dark 
eyes. The other Malays have lighter skins. 

Then, too, in the jungles of the Malay penin¬ 
sula there is a little tribe of Negritos, or Dwarf 
Blacks, called the Semang. They are a very 
shy little people. Though small, they have 
sturdy bodies, round faces, short, flat noses, 
and black hair of a queer reddish tinge. 


Are all the 
people in the 
Malay Peninsula 
alike? 


Chapter VII 


STRANGE PEOPLES OF OCEANIA 


What sort of 
people live 
on the islands 
in the Pacific? 


O CEANIA is a land of strange peoples. 

It takes in thousands of islands of all 
sizes, from very large to very small, scattered 
over the Pacific Ocean, the largest of all the 
world’s oceans. 

The Malays, as we have just noticed, are a 
very widespread race. Besides the branches of 
the family that live in the Malay peninsula, 
there are some branches living in islands such 
as Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, Bali, Lom¬ 
bok, Billiton, Bangka, Nias, and Formosa, and 
other branches in the Spice Islands, the Philip¬ 
pines, and many other islands. There is still 
another branch of the family in the far-away 
island of Madagascar, on the western side of 
the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Africa. 

If you will look at a map, you will see just 


70 


STRANGE PEOPLES OF OCEANIA 


7i 


where all these islands are. In some of these 
islands the Malays have mixed with other races. 
The Malays living in all these different islands 
are, in fact, somewhat different from each 
other. Some are peaceful and some are war¬ 
like; some are quite civilized and others live 
in the forests. In the past, some of these savage 
tribes were head-hunters, but things like that 
have now been stopped. 

These islands where the Malays live are now 
ruled by other countries, such as England, Hol¬ 
land, and the United States. The Philippines, 
a very large group of islands, are ruled by the 
United States. Most of the people in those 
islands are Malays. Some of them, such as the 
Tagalogs, are civilized, while others are wild 
tribesmen. In the Philippines, also, there is 
another group of those strange little people, 
the Dwarf Blacks, or Negritos. This is the 
Aeta tribe. Their skin is a sooty-brown, their 
hair is black, and they are broad-headed, with 
rather thick lips and flat, broad noses. Some 


Are they 
civilized? 


72 


RACES OF MEN 


Are there many 
people there? 


of the Semang Dwarf Blacks live in the east¬ 
ern part of the island of Sumatra. 

Though Java is not the largest island in this 
group, it has the most people. There are about 
forty millions, nearly all Malays, living in that 
island which is famous for its fine coffee. In 
Java there are also many wonderfully carved 
stone temples, and the Javanese people know 
how to make beautiful things out of gold, cop¬ 
per, and iron. 

In some of the other islands of this part of 
Oceania the people are a mixture of Malays and 
Polynesians. The Polynesians are an interest¬ 
ing race who have many islands of their own, 
and we shall come back to them later. 

The Malays who live on the different islands 
we have been visiting are rather short and slen¬ 
der. Their skin is brownish, their hair straight 
and black, and they have round heads, with 
somewhat large cheek-bones, small noses (often 
straight) and wide nostrils, black eyes, some¬ 
times slightly slanting, rather thick lips, and 



Many of the Polynesians do not have to wor\ much 
because Nature supplies them with everything 


73 






























74 


RACES OF MEN 


Are there dwarfs 
on the islands? 


small hands and feet. As we noticed before, 
there is usually some difference in looks among 
the people of the various islands. 

Usually the Malays are peaceful and quiet, 
and many of them are hard workers. But some¬ 
times when they get excited, they fly into a 
blind rage, rushing around with sharp knives 
and trying to kill everybody they meet. When 
a Malay goes crazy like that, it is called run¬ 
ning amo\. 

The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, 
northwest of Sumatra, are the home of another 
branch of those curious little people, the Ne¬ 
gritos or Dwarf Blacks. Their bodies, though 
small, are well-built, and their skin varies from 
bronze to sooty-black. Their hair, too, is sooty 
black, but with a strange reddish tinge. They 
have small, broad heads, faces broad at the 
cheek-bones, full lips, and straight noses. They 
go about almost naked. They are active little 
fellows, merry and talkative. They have lived 
in their tiny islands ever since Stone Age times, 


STRANGE PEOPLES OF OCEANIA 


75 


and they think that those islands make up the 
whole world! 

A very large island in Oceania is Papua. In 
the wild, mountain regions of this island there 
is still another tribe of Negritos. They are 
called the Tapir os. They have lighter skins, 
brownish in color, but they have short, black 
hair, and in other ways are much like the Ne¬ 
gritos that we find elsewhere. Though small, 
they have very sturdy bodies. 

Most of the people of Papua, however, belong 
to the Oceanic Negroid race. They are taller 
than the Negritos and in other ways are differ¬ 
ent from them in looks. They are much more 
savage, also. They have very dark skins and 
great mops of frizzly hair standing up on their 
heads. They also have beards and hairy bodies, 
large noses, and bushy eyebrows. They are 
bold, noisy, and very excitable. They are fond 
of bright colors and like to decorate their bodies 
with brilliant feathers and with various orna¬ 
ments of shells and beads. 


Are all the 
dwarfs alike? 


76 


RACES OF MEN 


Are there 
any cannibals? 


The Papuans raise some crops, make pottery, 
and carve wood. They build large, swift boats, 
and are skillful sailors. They build houses up 
in the branches of trees and on poles driven 
into the water of lakes, like the Swiss lake 
dwellers who lived in the time of the Stone Age 
in Europe. In days gone by the Papuans were 
among the most savage and bloodthirsty people 
on earth. They were terrible cannibals; they 
used to make war on other tribes in order to 
capture many prisoners, whom they roasted 
and ate. However, although they are not civi¬ 
lized, they are no longer cannibals. 

There are other tribes of Oceanic Negroids 
living in islands far out in the Pacific Ocean, 
such as New Caledonia, the Solomon, and the 
Fiji Islands. They look a good deal like the 
Papuans. Their skins are a dark chocolate 
color, but sometimes copper-colored, and they 
have frizzly or curly black hair. They seem 
to be somewhat mixed with other island races. 

In still other islands, such as Hawaii, Tahiti, 


Fijians are a dar\ 
chocolate color and 
have frizzly hair 




STRANGE PEOPLES OF OCEANIA 


77 


Samoa, and New Zealand, live the Polynesians, 
whom we mentioned a little while ago. They 
are people with light brown skins; some of 
them are as light as people in southern Europe. 
They have straight or wavy black hair, and are 
quite tall, with fine, strong bodies. Their faces 
look very Caucasian. Probably they are part 
Mongoloid and part Caucasian, or some other 
similar mixture. 

The Polynesians are an intelligent, friendly, 
peaceful people. They are expert swimmers 
and divers. We are sorry that they are becom¬ 
ing fewer in number all the time. 

The tribesmen of Australia are another very 
strange and interesting people. They, too, do 
not fit into any of our great groups of races. 
They are very dark, but their black hair is 
shaggy or straight instead of frizzly, and they 
have coarse beards. They have long heads, 
deep-set black eyes, wide nostrils, and thick 
lips. They seem to be closer to the Negroids 
than to any other race. 


Who are the 
Polynesians? 


78 


RACES OF MEN 


What sort of 
people first 
lived in 
Australia? 


The Australians are not savage or cruel, 
though they are a very lowly people. They 
have many curious customs, such as the tribal 
dance called a corroboree; and they have a 
strange weapon called a boomerang , which they 
can throw in such a way that it cames sailing 
back through the air. They go naked, but like 
many other peoples of Oceania they are fond 
of tattooing their bodies. Their only houses 
are little screens of leaves. They live on roots 
and fruits and the animals that they hunt. 
Since white people have been going to Australia 
and making their homes there, these tribes have 
been dying out. Only a few thousand of this 
strange people are left. 

In Tasmania, a beautiful island which lies 
south of Australia, there used to be a little tribe 
of Negroid people who were even more lowly 
than the Australians. They lived almost like 
animals. But they have all died. 



Chapter VIII 


A JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA 

AFRICA is next in our travels. Next to Asia, 
Africa is the largest of the continents. 
Until not very long ago, outsiders had never 
traveled over a large part of Africa. It was 
called the Dar\ Continent, because we knew 
so little about most of it. But since then many 
men from Europe and America have gone all 
over Africa. It is still very dangerous to go 
into the jungle, because of the many large wild 
animals that roam about, such as the lion and 
the rhinoceros. 

If you will look at Africa on the map, you 
will see that the Equator runs right across it in 
the middle. In that part of the continent it is 
so terribly hot that white people cannot live 
there. We think of Africa as the home of the 


Which is the 
Dar\ Continent? 


79 


8o 


RACES OF MEN 


Are there other 
people than 
Negroes in 
Africa? 

Negro. That is true. But at the northern end 
and also at the southern end it is cooler, and 
many white people live there. 

Let us begin at the north and make a little 
journey through Africa so as to see what kinds 
of people we shall meet. 

In northern Africa along the shores of the 
Mediterranean Sea live the Berbers, who belong 
to the Caucasian race. They have lived there 
for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians 
called them the Libyans . Most of them have 
black hair and brown or hazel eyes, with light 
skins. A few of them have fair hair and blue 


eyes. There are several different tribes of Ber¬ 
bers, some of whom live among the mountains 
in that region. They speak a Hamitic tongue. 
Most of this country is now ruled by France. 

There are many Arabs, also, in this part of 
Africa. Some of them live in the oases (places 
where there are grass, trees, and water) of the 
great Sahara Desert, a hot, dry, sandy country 
which stretches across northern Africa. In or- 


There are many Arabs in 
Egypt and Northern Africa 



A JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA 81 

der to cross it, a person has to ride on a camel’s 
back, for the camel can go without water a 
long time without losing strength. 

The next country we must visit is Egypt, 
which is in the northeast part of Africa. It 
is a very famous land. Thousands of years ago 
it was the greatest kingdom in the world. The 
Egyptians were dark-skinned Caucasians. They 
built many beautiful temples. They built lofty 
pyramids, which still stand, as tombs for their 
kings. We shall find people who have come 
down from the ancient Egyptians still living in 
that country, but there are now many Arabs 
there, too. Egypt has a very rich soil, but there 
is no rain. The river Nile goes through the 
country, and once every year the water flows 
over the river’s banks, moistening the soil so 
that crops can be grown. 

South of Egypt we come to Abyssinia, an¬ 
other very interesting country. Few outsiders 
have ever been there. The people are so dark 
that they look almost like Negroes, but we in- 


What color arc 
the Egyptians? 


82 


RACES OF MEN 


Who live in 
the Sudan? 


elude them in the Caucasian race. They are 
very strong, active people. They belong to 
the Hamitic family but they speak a Semitic 
language. Most of the people in this part of 
Africa are Mohammedans, but the Abyssinians 
have followed the Christian religion for many 
hundreds of years. 

South of the Sahara Desert we come to a 
country with good soil and plenty of water 
called the Sudan. Here the people belong to 
the Negroid race, but most of them are some¬ 
what mixed. There are so many different tribes 
that we cannot name all of them. Some of 
them are Mohammedans, and others are still 
pagans who possess idols called fetishes . 
Among the larger tribes there are the Mandin- 
gans, the Jolofs, the Songhas, in West Sudan; 
the Hausas, east of the Niger River; the Kan- 
embu, the Kanuri, and the Baghirmi, of the 
Chad basin; the Mabas, the Furs, the Nubians, 
and the Fulahs. The last named are found 
in the region from Senegambia to Lake Chad. 


A JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA 


83 


The Mandingans are so well worth seeing that 
we shall stop to look at them a bit more closely. 

There are four tribes of them. Each of them is 
named after its totem or chosen animal. They 
are the Bambara (crocodile), the Malinke 
(hippopotamus), the Samanke (elephant), and 
the Samokho (snake). 

At one time the Mandingans ruled a large How do they 
part of central Africa. They are good workers. llve? 

They till the soil, they are weavers, and they 
make things out of metal. 

These tribes are somewhat different in looks, 
but you can easily tell that they belong to the 
Negroid family. They have dark skins, but 
not so dark as the real Negroes. 

Still farther south, nearer the Equator, live 
many tribes of real Negroes. We must stop 
for a little while to visit them and to see what 
they are like. Some of these Negro tribes are 
the Serers, the Felups, the Vei, the Goras, the 
Bussi, the Krus, the Grebos, the Fanti, the 
Ashanti, the Dahomi, the Mossi, the Borgus, 

It is easy to tell the 
tribes that belong to 
the Negroid family 



8 4 


RACES OF MEN 


What do they 
believe? 



and the Bautchi. Most of them are pagans, 
but some are now Mohammedans. 

One of the leading tribes is the Krus. They 
are a strong, broad-chested people, with very 
dark skins, thick lips, and short, woolly hair. 
Living near the coast, they make good sailors 
and often work on English ships. At home 
in their little villages near the sea they wear 
scarcely any clothing. 

These tribes generally live in rude huts of 
grass and leaves. They believe in magic as a 
way of escaping danger and getting things they 
want. In their tribal life they had customs that 
made them do cruel things and shed a great 
deal of blood. But that has now been ended 
for all time. 

Along the shores of the Gulf of Guinea and 
in the back country we shall find many of the 
Negro peoples. It was from this part of Africa 
that the forefathers of the American Negroes 
came. 

As we go onward toward South Africa, we 


Krus live in rude huts 
of grass and leaves 
















A JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA 


85 


meet another very large Negroid family, di¬ 
vided into many tribes. They are called the 
Bantus. They look a good deal like the real 
Negroes, but are much lighter in skin. We 
think that they are partly Hamitic, and their 
forefathers came from the country around the 
“Horn” of Africa and went southward. 

The Bantu family is, as we just said, a very 
large one. There are about fifty million people 
in it. The different tribes speak languages that 
are much alike, but quite different from the 
Negro languages. It is a very fine speech. 

We find Bantu tribes in east central Africa, 
south of the Equator to the mouth of the Zam¬ 
besi River; in the basin of the Congo River; in 
Nyasaland; in west central Africa, from the 
Kamerun River to Angola; and in southern 
Africa south of the Zambesi. 

If you will look at the map of Africa in a big 
atlas, you will easily find all these places, and 
it will be fun to do so. 

The Bantus, before their country began to 


Who are 
Bantus? 


86 


RACES OF MEN 


Who are the 
Zulus? 



be ruled by European nations, had a number 
of kingdoms of their own, such as Uganda, 
Unyoro, and Karagwe, and there was a great 
deal of warfare among them. 

Most of the people still live in tribes, each 
of which has its totem, such as the grasshopper, 
the sheep, and the crocodile. 

Over in East Africa, near the island of Zan¬ 
zibar, live the Swahili, a curious people who 
are part Bantu and part Arabic, just as is the 
language in which they speak. 

In South Africa there is a great Bantu peo¬ 
ple called the Zulus, or Kafirs. The Zulus were 
the bravest warriors of all the Bantus. They 
fought with shields and long, sharp spears 
called assegais, which they could throw very 
skilfully. The Zulus had a kingdom of their 
own. Each tribe was ruled by its own chief, 
and there was a council of wise men from the 
different tribes. At the head of all was a great 
chief who was the ruler and father of his people. 

The country of the Zulus is now ruled by 


The Zulus fought with 
shields and long 
spears 




A JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA 


87 


England. But the Zulus still live in their vil¬ 
lages and till the soil, though they cannot make 
war any more. They are a friendly people, 
fond of music and dancing, and have many 
quaint customs. Their marriage ceremonies 
are very interesting. 

The Bantus are all very strong, healthy peo¬ 
ple, with well-shaped heads, limbs, and bodies. 
The Zulus are one of the best of the Bantu 
peoples. They are tall, with brown skins, and 
black hair more frizzly than woolly. 

In South Africa we meet also Bushmen and 
Hottentots. The Bushmen’s forefathers prob¬ 
ably came from the north a long time ago. The 
Hottentots are cousins of the Bushmen; they 
are perhaps partly Hamitic. They, too, we 
think, came from the north, following the 
Bushmen, going down to the southern end 
of Africa. They are both very short people. 
Though they are not so short as the Negritos, 
or Dwarf Blacks, we believe that they belong 
to the same family. 


Where did the 
Bushmen come 
from? 


88 


RACES OF MEN 


Are they 
black? 


Both the Bushmen and the Hottentots have 
yellowish-brown skins, instead of dark choco¬ 
late or black skins like the ordinary Negroes. 
They have very wide cheek-bones. The Hot¬ 
tentots are a little taller than the Bushmen. 
Their eyes slant somewhat and are deep set; 
they have large mouths with thick lips and 
narrow chins; they have broad, flat noses, jaws 
sticking out, long heads, and woolly black hair 
growing in funny little tufts. In speaking, the 
Bushmen and the Hottentots make strange 
sounds called clic\s> of which there are about 
nine different kinds. Of course they make 
the usual sounds, too. 

Before the coming of the white men, the 
Hottentots ruled themselves as a tribe, and 
they raised many cattle. The Bushmen were 
wandering hunters. They hunted with the 
bow and poisoned arrows. They clothed them¬ 
selves with the skins of animals, and lived in 
caves, rock shelters, or under the leaves of 
bushes which they pulled together. That is 


A JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA 


why they were called Bushmen . They lived 
a great deal like those early people of the Old 
Stone Age in Europe; and, like those people, 
they used to paint pictures on the rocks. They 
had many tribal stories, which we call myths. 

Among the deep forests of Africa near the 
Equator, chiefly in the Congo land, live the 
African branches of the Negritos, or Dwarf 
Blacks, whose cousins we visited in southern 
Asia and Oceania. These pigmies are a very 
shy little folk, seldom seen by white people. 
We think that they and their forefathers have 
been living right there ever since the early days 
of the Stone Age. There are several small tribes 
of them, such as the Akka, the Batwa, and the 
Bambute. They are real dwarfs. Some of them 
are only three feet tall, and most of them only 
about four feet and a half. 

Their skin is of different shades from yellow¬ 
ish-brown to very dark, and their hair is gen¬ 
erally a dark rusty-brown. Like that of their 
neighbors, it is woolly. Their arms are rather 


Where do the 
Pigmies live? 



Some Pigmies are only 
three feet tall 


90 


RACES OF MEN 


How do 
they live? 


long and their legs short. They have full lips, 
narrow chins, broad noses, and bulging eyes. 
Though small, their bodies are stocky. 

These pigmies live by hunting. They shoot 
with poisoned arrows. They know how to 
make a kind of palm wine. In spite of their 
small size, they are quick-witted little fellows. 
They have good memories, and sharp eyes to 
see what is going on. They are very good-na¬ 
tured, and have great fun in mimicking the 
ways of white men and other people whom 
they meet. 

All of Africa is now ruled or controlled by 
different nations of Europe except the king¬ 
dom of Abyssinia and a little republic on the 
western coast, known as Liberia. Liberia is 
the only country in Africa that is ruled by Ne¬ 
groes. The forefathers of many of the Libe¬ 
rians were once slaves in America. The country 
has a government copied after that of the United 
States, and the English language is spoken by 
many Liberians. You will find there planta- 


A JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA 


9i 


tion houses that look very much like the kind 
of houses that used to be built in the southern 
part of the United States many years ago. 

The southern end of Africa is a long way 
from the Equator. So it has a fairly cool climate, 
and white people can live there comfortably. 
Hundreds of years ago many Dutch people 
settled there, and later thousands of English 
people arrived there to make their homes. 
When gold and diamonds were found in South 
Africa, many more people hurried there from 
Europe. In the country now known as the 
Union of South Africa there are about a million 
and a half of white people, most of whom are 
Dutch or British. The people who are of Dutch 
blood are called Boers . 


Are there any 
white people 
in South Africa? 


Chapter IX 


Who were the 
first people in 
America? 


THE FIRST PEOPLE OF AMERICA 

A NOTHER race which holds our interest is 
that of the red-men of North and South 
America. These are the first people who lived 
in the New World; that is, the tribes of men 
who made their homes in North and South 
America before Columbus crossed the ocean 
in 1492. 

You will remember that Columbus with his 
three little ships set sail from Spain to try to 
find a shorter way from Europe to India. As 
he knew that the world is round (most people 
in those days thought that it was flat), he 
believed that by sailing westward he would 
reach India. He had no idea that there was a 
big continent in between. So when he reached 
that land, he thought it was a part of India, 
and he thought that the people he found there 


92 


THE FIRST PEOPLE OF AMERICA 


93 


were Indians—people of India—so that is what 
he called them. 

It was a long time before anyone knew that 
America was not a part of India. Meanwhile, 
everyone was calling the people who lived in 
America Indians . The name stuck to them. 
When it was found that a mistake had been 
made—that America was not India and so the 
people who lived there were not really Indians 
—it was too late to change the name. So after 
hundreds of years we still talk about American 
Indians, though India is thousands of miles 
away. Some people now call them Amerinds, 
which is just a shorter way people have of say¬ 
ing American Indians . 

For a long time nobody had any idea where 
the Indians came from. It was thought that 
they must be a race all by themselves, separate 
from all the other races of the world. But 
men who have made a careful study of this 
matter are now quite sure that the Indians 
really belong to the great Mongoloid family. 


They were not 
really Indians 
at all 


Why were they 
called Indians? 



94 


RACES OF MEN 


Do they loo\ 
li\e other 
Mongoloid 
peoples? 


Of course an Indian does not look very much 
like a Chinese or a Japanese, though he belongs 
to the same family. But a Norwegian or a 
Swede is just as different in looks from a 
Spaniard or an Italian, though they, too, belong 
to one family—the Caucasian. There are many 
different tribes of Indians, and there is a good 
deal of difference among them. 

That is just what we should expect, because 
long before white men came to the New World 
the Indians had made their homes all over 
North and South America. A tribe in one 
place had to live a very different sort of life 
than a tribe in another place far away. At one 
end were the Eskimos, living along the icy 
shores of the Arctic Ocean. At the other end 
were the Fuegians, living in the cold and bleak 
country around Cape Horn, which is the 
southern tip of South America, as you will see 
if you look at the map. 

While you have the map before you, look 
up to the north and you will see that Asia and 


THE FIRST PEOPLE OF AMERICA 


95 


North America at one place nearly touch each 
other. The western tip of Alaska is cut off 
from the eastern tip of Siberia by a very narrow 
piece of water called Behring Strait . Ages 
ago, as we have already seen, there was land 
there, and one could walk across from Asia to 
North America. 

We feel pretty sure that the forefathers of 
the American Indians came into the New 
World by this pathway. We know that many 
animals of Asia in those far-off days crossed 
over into America at that point, and probably 
the men who hunted the animals simply 
followed them across. It may be that a few 
people from Asia, at different times, were blown 
across the Pacific Ocean in boats that got caught 
in heavy storms. Quite likely small groups of 
such persons may have landed here and there 
on the western coast of America. One reason 
that we think this may have happened is 
because some of the stone temples that we find 
in Central America look so much like temples 


How did they 
reach America? 



RACES OF MEN 


Did other 
people come 
to America? 


96 

in southeast Asia; some of the carvings in the 
stone, also, are like some that we see in that 
part of Asia. But this is only a guess; we cannot 
be sure about it. 

We do know that nearly a thousand years 
ago certain Norsemen from Iceland crossed the 
North Atlantic in their staunch boats and 
stayed for a time at different places on the 
American coast. But they did not stay very 
long. There were many warlike Indians there, 
and the Norsemen had no guns, for the people 
of Europe did not yet know how to make guns. 

Some think that the very earliest men who 
came into America in the Stone Age days 
belonged to the Negroid race. Skulls and 
other bones have been found in Brazil, in South 
America, that look very much like those of 
the Oceanic Negroids. But these people died 
out or became mixed with the Indians. We 
still find in the jungles of South America some 
strange tribes of Indians that have wavy or 
even frizzly hair. 


THE FIRST PEOPLE OF AMERICA 


97 


The Eskimos in the Far North, also, are a 
very early people. Small tribes of them are 
found all the way from Alaska to Greenland. 
In their way of living they are a good deal like 
those Stone Age people of Europe that we were 
speaking about. It is easy to see that they must 
have come from northern Asia, for they look 
very much like the Mongoloid people that we 
saw there. Admiral Peary, the man who first 
got to the North Pole, tells us that when he 
brought an Eskimo girl to the United States, 
a Chinese who saw her on the street thought 
that she was from his country and tried to talk 
with her in Chinese! 

Probably at first there were just a few people 
coming into North America. But more and 
more kept coming as time went on. Many 
began to pour in at the close of the great Ice 
Age, when the ice sheet which covered the 
northeast part of the continent melted away 
and the climate got much warmer. 

In those days, North and South America 


What are the 
Eskimos like? 


9 8 


RACES OF MEN 


What two 
great groups of 
people came 
to America? 


were truly a New World. The Old World 
was pretty well filled with people. But here 
were two large continents where people could 
come and make themselves at home and have 
all the land they wanted for hunting. The 
fields and forests were teeming with animals 
and birds, and the lakes and rivers with fish. 

It is believed that the biggest group of Indians 
that came into America slowly traveled down 
through the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains 
and the Andes, between the high mountains 
and the great forests lying to the east. These 
people had all been living in the Stone Age 
when they were in the Old World. They led 
very simple lives, hunting and fishing for food, 
and using tools and weapons of stone and bone. 

Among the early arrivals in North America 
were two peoples who spread out over a large 
part of the continent. These were the Algon- 
kians and the Athapascans, a hardy folk with 
long heads. They became two of the greatest 
Indian tribes in the country. 


THE FIRST PEOPLE OF AMERICA 


99 


After these there came many groups of 
broad-headed people. We speak of this as the 
Shoshone-Muskogean invasion. These people 
later became scattered through the region 
around Lake Michigan and down as far south 
as the State of Florida. 

The coming of these different groups of 
people into America was rather quiet, for there 
was still plenty of room for all. Then many 
other groups poured in, and there was a great 
mix-up. The newcomers found other tribes 
already in the lands that they entered, and there 
was much mingling and pushing about. So it 
happened that along the western coast of North 
America there were all kinds of tribes mixed 
up. In the part of the country from British 
Columbia down through California there were 
four times as many Indian tribes as in all the 
rest of the continent. 

In most parts of North and South America 
the Indians lived mainly by hunting and 
fishing, although some of them raised a little 


The Indians lived 
a healthy out-of- 
door life 


Who came 
after them? 






100 


RACES OF MEN 


How did the 
Indians live? 



corn where the land was good. In the country 
that is now the northern part of the United 
States the Indians were very strong and sturdy, 
with tall, straight bodies. This was due to the 
healthy, out-of-door life that they lived. The 
men were brave warriors, fearless in battle, and 
they could stand terrible hardships. Even in 
the coldest winter, when it was below zero, 
they could go about with scarcely any clothing. 
An Indian once told a white man that Indians 
were “all face,” and so they really did not need 
clothing. They lived in little tents made of 
poles covered with skins or bark, called wig¬ 
wams, or tepees. 

But many of the Indian tribes knew how to 
make very good clothing out of deer skin. 
They also made soft shoes, called moccasins, 
out of the same kind of skin. When they went 
to war, they put on head-dresses of eagle 
feathers and painted their bodies with red paint 
to frighten their enemies. They were often 
very cruel in war. They fought with bows and 


THE FIRST PEOPLE OF AMERICA 


IOI 


arrows, and sharp stone hatchets called toma¬ 
hawk . They used to cut of! the scalps of the 
enemies that they slew. When they made peace 
with their foes, the chiefs sat down around the 
camp-fire, and all smoked “the pipe of peace” 
one after another. 

In the southwest part of the United States, 
in what is now Arizona, there were people who 
built stone houses perched high up on cliffs. 
We call them the Cliff Dwellers . You can 
still see these strange houses throughout that 
part of the country. They are all in ruins now, 
for nobody lives in them any more. Then over 
in New Mexico there were Indians who built 
very large houses of baked mud, called pueblos . 
In these houses many families lived. They 
entered the houses by climbing ladders to the 
roofs. There are Indians still living in those 
houses. They make beautiful blankets and 
mold fine pottery. 

As we have seen, the different tribes of 
Indians spread all over the two continents of 


Where did the 
Cliff Dwellers 
live? 


102 


RACES OF MEN 


How did the 
Indians loo\? 


North and South America. They made their 
homes in lands with all kinds of different 
climates, hot and cold, moist and dry, on high 
hills and in low valleys, on broad plains and in 
thick forests and jungles, near the coast and 
hundreds of miles inland. So you would not 
expect all the Indians to look alike. 

Some of them were very tall, while others 
were rather short. Most of them had skins of 
a reddish or copper-like color, but there were 
some with dark-brown skins, and others (along 
the Amazon River) with yellowish skins. 
Those in the north generally had large cheek¬ 
bones, heavy jaws, rather big noses, black eyes 
and long, straight black hair, but no beards. 

The Indians had many very interesting 
tribal customs; they believed in magic and they 
worshipped gods and spirits. Although they 
had very strong feelings, the Indians generally 
were a very silent people; they spoke little, 
except among the family. They were generally 
very serious in looks, but rather moody in their 



The Indians made their homes in lands with all 
\inds of different climates 


103 










104 


RACES OF MEN 


What was the 
language of the 
Indians like? 


tempers. At times they could be very cruel. 
They spoke many different languages, but the 
speech of all the tribes was much the same in 
form. A whole sentence would be crowded 
into one long word which would be spoken 
in a single breath. We find languages of this 
kind only among the American Indians. 

The Indians who lived in the country that 
is now the United States had to give up nearly 
all their lands to the white people who came 
to make their homes in America. There are 
still thousands of Indians in the United States, 
but they cannot wander around hunting the 
buffalo and other animals, as they did long ago. 
Most of them live on reservations which the 
white people have set aside for them. Nearly 
all of them are in the western part of the coun¬ 
try. But there are still some Indians of the Iro¬ 
quois tribes living in New York State. 

There are many Indians in Canada and 
Alaska, and still more in Mexico and in the 
countries farther south. Altogether, there are 


THE FIRST PEOPLE OF AMERICA 


105 


about ten million full-blooded Indians now in 
North and South America. 

The Indians never saw any horses until white 
men began to bring them over from Europe. 
But they quickly learned how to ride on horses, 
and the tribes on the great plains of North 
America and the plains of Argentina (called 
pampas ) became very skillful riders. 

When the white men first came to America, 
there were tribes of Indians living in Cuba, 
Haiti, and the other islands of the West Indies. 
But they are gone now; only white people and 
Negroes live there today. 

But there are millions of Indians still living 
in Mexico, Central America, and all over South 
America. Most of the Indians in these lands 
are peaceful and well-behaved. But in the 
thick jungles of Brazil there are some that you 
would not want to meet. 

Down near the southern end of South 
America, where the climate begins to get cold 
again, because as you keep going south you 


Did they 
have horses? 


Do Indians live 
in other parts of 
North and South 
America? 


RACES OF MEN 


106 


Who are the 
tallest people 
in the world? 



get nearer the South Pole, lives a tribe called 
the Patagonians. They are among the tallest 
people in the world, the men being about six 
feet, four inches tall. They have broad 
shoulders, strong, well-built bodies, and a manly 
bearing. They make their living by hunting 
but have always lived at peace with their 
neighbors. In hunting animals they use a 
strange weapon called the bolo . It is made by 
covering two or three round stones with 
leather and tying them loosely together on 
strong leather thongs about eight feet long. 
The hunter whirls the bolo in the air and then 
throws it with such good aim that the balls 
wind around the thing they hit. The hunter 
is riding swiftly on his horse when he throws 
the bolo. 

Down at the very tip of South America, 
among the islands near Cape Horn, live the 
strange people called Fuegians. The name of 
their country is Tierra del Fuego, which means 
Land of Fire, although it is bitterly cold. 


The hunter whirls the 
bolo in the air and 
then throws it 


THE FIRST PEOPLE OF AMERICA 


107 


There are three tribes of Fuegians. Of the 
three, we think that the Yahgans have been 
there the longest. They are small people, most 
of them being only four and a half feet tall. 
They are dark-skinned, with coarse black hair, 
and low, narrow foreheads. They have small 
black eyes, often with slanting eyelids, and they 
have short noses with wide nostrils. They live 
in a terribly cold and bleak country, where it 
is very hard to get things to eat. Their food 
is mostly shell-fish. Sometimes a big whale is 
washed up on the coast, and then the people 
stuff themselves with whale meat and blubber. 

In spite of the cold and wet climate, the 
Fuegians go about almost naked; they wear 
loose skins thrown over their shoulders. They 
have no houses and scarcely anything to shelter 
them from the storms. But like all other tribes, 
they have a language, and some say that it is 
a much better language than we should expect. 
On the whole, the Fuegians are one of the most 
lowly people on earth, living much the same 


What people live 
in the land 
farthest south? 


Did any of the 
Indians have a 
great civilization ? 


108 RACES OF MEN 

sort of lives as did the poor Tasmanians, who 
have now all died. 

But there were some Indian tribes that had 
gone a long way toward civilized life before 
the white men came to America. It was in 
the middle part of the New World that certain 
tribes settled down to till the soil and raise 
crops instead of depending on hunting and 
fishing. More people can live on the same 
amount of land in that way. They raised 
different kinds of fruits, grains, and vegetables. 
The potato was first grown in America by the 
Indians. (Tobacco is an American plant; the 
Indians were the first people who used it.) 

There were three Indian peoples who built 
up great empires. In northern South America 
there were the Peruvians; in the peninsula of 
Yucatan and in Central America there were 
the Mayas; and in Mexico there were the 
Aztecs. All of these Indian empires were swept 
away by the Spaniards. 

The Peruvians were a number of tribes ruled 


THE FIRST PEOPLE OF AMERICA 


109 

by a powerful tribe called the Incas . They 
built temples and other buildings of huge stone 
blocks, and they had an animal called the 
llama (a cousin of the camel) for carrying 
goods. The Peruvians wrought beautiful 
jewelry of gold and silver. They kept records 
by making knots in differently colored cords. 
Their country was conquered by the Spaniards. 

The Mayas were another great Indian people. 
According to the stories which they handed 
down from father to son, their forefathers came 
from the north. They settled in Yucatan about 
fifteen hundred years ago, and they spread over 
Central America. The built great stone temples 
covered with beautiful carvings, they had a 
very correct calendar by which they kept a 
record of the years, and they knew a good deal 
of science. They used to write by pictures. 

The Aztecs were a people who came into the 
valley of Mexico from the north about nine 
hundred years ago. They conquered an earlier 
people, the Toltecs, who were much like the 


Who were the 
Incas? 


Who were the 
Mayas? 


no 


RACES OF MEN 


Who were 
the Aztecs? 


Mayas. The Aztecs ruled a great empire. 
They, too, had a kind of picture writing, they 
made beautiful carvings in stone, and they built 
tall temples shaped like pyramids. But they 
had a very cruel religion, and they used to kill 
thousands of people to please their gods. The 
chief city of the Aztecs was named Tenochtitlan. 
It was where the City of Mexico now stands. 

Though the Peruvians, the Mayas, and the 
Aztecs were conquered by the white men, 
millions of them still live in the lands of their 
forefathers. Many of these Indians mingled 
with the Spaniards, and we find people in these 
countries now who are of a mixed race. 

So we end our little visit to the different 
peoples of the world. We found that though 
some of them seemed very strange to us, they 
are all human like ourselves. Together, they 
make up the big human family. 











































































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